Niels Bohr Library & Archives

06/05/2026

What can a physicist’s personal library tell us about the history of science? Quite a lot, actually.

When the Niels Bohr Library & Archives received more than 40 boxes of books from physicist and historian Silvan “Sam” Schweber, staff found far more than textbooks on quantum theory. Inside were handwritten notes, inscriptions from colleagues, plane tickets, review requests, multilingual annotations, and traces of an extraordinary life shaped by war, migration, and scientific collaboration.

Born in Strasbourg, France in 1928, Schweber and his Jewish family fled Europe during World War II. He eventually built a career as a theoretical physicist, historian of science, and professor at Brandeis University. His books reflect all of it: Cold War physics, international scientific exchange, friendships with figures like Hans Bethe, and the evolution of modern physics itself.

This is why donor collections matter. A library is more than the sum of its parts. Marginalia becomes biography. Bookplates become a family’s story of migration and survival. As long as you bought them, librarians and archivists are happy for you to write in your books as much as you want; in fact, we encourage it. Your little scribble today is in archivist’s buried treasure tomorrow.

📚 Read more:

Some books live their whole lives with only one owner. Many books, however, have at least two, if not many owners, and often physically bear the evidence of the hands they have passed though. As a public school kid here in Maryland, I was issued previously-used textbooks every year by my teachers in...

06/03/2026

We are launching a new series inspired by ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter, one of the most beloved guides to the language of rare books and bibliography.

A is for Armorial: “As an adjective...of bookplates based on, or incorporating, the owner’s arms. As a noun, used colloquially for an armorially decorated book.”

In simpler terms: if you have ever wanted your books to scream “this belongs to me and my extremely rich family,” armorial bookplates are for you.

Bookplates can help preserve traces of earlier owners; some are simple and some have elaborate heraldry and mottos. Armorial bookplates help librarians and historians trace provenance, ownership, collecting habits, and the movement of books across centuries and continents.

📷 Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences ... avec les mémoires de mathématique & de physique 1742; Henri Becquerel’s Recherches sur l'absorption de la lumiére, 1888.

05/28/2026

We were thrilled to meet the science history writing legend, Dava Sobel, last night!

Dava Sobel gave a talk as part of AIP’s Lyne Starling Trimble Public Event Series, “At Mme. Curie’s Lab: Radioactivity and a Place for Women in Science.” The talk reflected the subject of her latest book, “The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science,” all about Marie Curie, her family, and the women she hired and mentored at her laboratory, mostly physicists and chemists. A recording of the lecture will soon be available on the AIP History YouTube channel.

We were lucky to get our copy of “The Elements” signed by Dava Sobel, and took the opportunity to get this picture of her (center) in front of a book display we put together especially for the event, featuring books by and about Marie Curie and the women she mentored, including Mme. Curie’s thesis and lectures at the Sorbonne.

05/28/2026

It’s been raining in College Park and we’re feeling blue ☔🔵So here’s an assortment of blue stamps from the American Institute of Physics collection of stamps, coins, and currency, 1901-2008. 📮📨

1) “Atoms for Peace” originates from the title of a speech delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City in December of 1953. Stamp date: July 28, 1955 (Information from Smithsonian National Postal Museum)

2) Arctic Explorations: This US stamp was issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Admiral Robert Peary’s voyage to the North Pole as well as the journey of the USS Nautilus submarine under the polar ice in 1957. Stamp date: 1909 (Info from Little Postage House)

3) 11-12 juilliet 1962: France issued this stamp, along with a few other variations, in 1962 to inform the world that a facility owned by their post office had made the first satellite television broadcast. Stamp date: 1962 (Info from Smithsonian)

4) A tribute to the two-man Gemini program, these stamps were the first US ‘twin stamps’—a horizontal pair forming one image. This design shows astronaut Ed White performing the first U.S. spacewalk in 1965. Stamp date: 1967 (Info from Smithsonian National Postal Museum)

05/26/2026

Physicist Robert Oppenheimer with his horse, Crisis, at his New Mexico ranch in 1940. 🐎

Crisis was one of two horses that Oppenheimer had at Los Alamos. In the biography “American Prometheus,” the basis for the blockbuster film “Oppenheimer,” Crisis is described as “a large, half-castrated stallion that no one but Robert could ride.”. He was later sold to Oppenheimer's friend, physicist George Kistiakowsky so that he and his wife, Vera, could go riding together.

📷 Photo by Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, wife of Robert. Courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

05/21/2026

Alright, Emilio, spill the tea... 🍵

Emilio Segrè (left), namesake of our visual archives, sips tea with Homi J. Bhabha (right), who has been called the “master builder of nuclear India.” At the time this photograph was taken in 1962, Segrè had been awarded his Nobel Prize and was working at the University of California, Berkeley. This was no doubt a stimulating conversation with Homi Bhabha, a nuclear physicist who founded and directed the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (later renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre). The TIFR had just opened in its new, permanent, location that year. In fact, on the same trip during which this photo was taken, Emilio Segrè gave a talk to the TIFR in the institute’s auditorium, possibly as part of the inaugural festivities for the new building.

Happy International Tea Day! ☕ For more tea about tea and physics, check the first comment for a post by historian Joanna Behrman all about this most delicious beverage in the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.

05/20/2026

When you do your job so well that 60 years later some poor archivist has to spend three hours alphabetizing your fan mail... 💅

This fan mail is from registrants who successfully found employment or employees through the American Institute of Physics Placement Service Register, as well as words of praise to the Placement Service staff from AIP officers. The Placement Service conducted surveys of employers to distribute to jobseekers in the physical sciences and maintained a register of jobseekers to match to employers, as well as arranging interviews through the Placement Register. AIP ran the Placement Service from around 1946 to 1978.

As you can see, it was very popular!

05/19/2026

May is Learn to Fly Month ✈️☁️

From teenage plane enthusiasts to physicists who changed aviation forever, physics history is full of scientists with their heads in the clouds. Ronald Mickens, Luis Alvarez, Oleska-Myron Bilaniuk, and Julian Schwinger each shared a love of flight—and helped shape the way we understand the world both in the air and beyond it.

Alvarez helped pioneer ground-controlled approach (GCA), a radar-guided landing system still essential to aviation today. Bilaniuk was a pilot and flight instructor. And Schwinger? He could explain why time seems to fly when you’re having fun.

Fasten your seatbelts and scroll through a few stories from the history of physics and aviation. Link to the post in the first comment! ✈️📚

Oleksa-Myron Bilaniuk in an airplane, May 1964. 2) Left: Ronald Mickens as a teenager in his parents’ backyard in Petersburg, VA, holding a gasoline engine-powered model airplane. Right: William Meggers (son of William F. Meggers). ‘Airplane model building and pipe collecting are two major hobbies of William Meggers, 16. 3) Luis Alvarez speaks into a communication radio in the cockpit of a plane. control panel . 4) Julian Schwinger talking about relativity on British television while holding a model airplane. All images courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

05/18/2026

Happy International Museum Day! Thank you museums, for all that you do!

While we don’t have a physical museum, we, along with many libraries, archives, and museums have online exhibits; sometimes they are companions to physical exhibits, but there are also many that exist purely in a digital format. These images represent a few featured online exhibits at different institutions:

Exhibit: Nylon: From Labs to Legs by Science History Institute. “Encounter the science of synthetic stretch textiles and the hidden histories behind decay.” Image credit: Credit: Gill, Leslie. “Color Crazy,” 1955. Science History Institute. Philadelphia. Public domain.

Voyages of the R/V Vema exhibit by us! (AIP’s History Department). Oral history interviews, geographical mapping, images, videos, and historical and scientific data to highlight some of the most memorable events and discoveries aboard this research vessel. Image credit: AIP

The Nidologist represents “Drawn from Nature: Art, Science, and the Study of Birds.” This exhibit from Linda Hall Library “explores the roles that artists, scientists, and amateur bird watchers have played in identifying, cataloging, and popularizing the study of North American birds from the 18th century to today.” Image credit: Published by Henry Reed Taylor in Alameda, California. February 1897

“The career path of Margaret McClanahan, a 1916 graduate, reflects the varied and diverse career paths of many home economics graduates.” From Cornell University Library's exhibit “What Was Home Economics?” Image credit: Cornell University Library.

🔗 in bio to a post with links to all of these exhibits, in addition to four more exhibits recommended by us!

05/18/2026

Interviews now available to the public bring the famed physicist’s lesser-known early years to life.